SOPHIATOWN

THE TOWN DESTROYED TO STOP BLACK AND WHITE PEOPLE MIXING

By Ellen OtzenBBC World Service

11 February 2015

Sophiatown, in the suburbs of Johannesburg, was once known for its bohemian lifestyle
and vibrant music scene. But 60 years ago, the South African government decided to clear
the multi-racial neighbourhood to turn it into a whites-only area.

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The sound of horses’ hooves and shouts from police woke 10-year-old Victor Mokine early
one morning.

It was February 1955, and Mokine lived with his family in Sophiatown, home to 65,000
people – black, white, mixed-race, Chinese and Indian.

“I could see policemen on horseback in our yard. Our parents told us to stay inside the house
as they thought there would be violence,” he says.

“They were armed with rifles, pistols, some with machineguns. We could hear the sound of
rolling trucks that had arrived to carry people’s belongings.”

The residents of Sophiatown had been told that they were going to be moved to a new site
ten miles to the west. But in order to pre-empt any resistance, the authorities arrived three
days earlier than planned, while it was still dark, catching the residents unprepared.
When Mokine and his family eventually went outside, they realised that 2,000 police had
descended on the sleeping neighbourhood.
Sophiatown was one of the few areas in South Africa at the time where black people were
allowed to own land.

But the government used the Group Areas Act, which compelled different racial groups to
live separately, to enforce its policy of segregation.

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Victor Mokine spoke to Witness on BBC World Service Radio.

It had decided two years earlier that the people of Sophiatown should be moved to a new
site called Meadowlands after residents in neighbouring white suburbs started agitating for
their removal.

Over the next couple of days, the evictions began in earnest.

“There was a great deal of fear. Some of the policemen simply kicked the doors in, while they
shouted in Afrikaans at people to get outside. It felt like a war situation,” says Mokine.
Paul Joseph, then a factory worker in his mid-20s and a member of the Indian Youth
Congress, lived in nearby Fordsburg and went to Sophiatown the day the removals began.

Paul Joseph
There would have been a massacre if they [resisted] Paul Joseph

“I went there and stood on the fringes and watched people being loaded onto the trucks very
quietly. There was no singing, no shouting, no opposition,” he says.
“It was clearly [a campaign] of overpowering intimidation.“
Paul Joseph
But the authorities portrayed it as a time of celebration, saying the residents were happy to
get away from a “plague spot”. A local news bulletin proclaimed they were rejoicing, their
“hearts are filled with happy expectation” as they headed for a new home.

.The “plague spot” was, until 1955, known for its musicians, artists, and writers as well as its
gangsters.
There was overcrowding and shared toilets in the yard but also a relentless energy and
optimism, recalls Joseph.
“People went to Sophiatown to listen to music,” he says.

The scene there attracted people from across Johannesburg and musicians who later went
on to become big stars, such as Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, started their careers
performing in Sophiatown’s jazz clubs.
But this wasn’t just the home of dance halls and parties. It was also a hub of ANC activity
and one of Paul Joseph’s friends, a young Nelson Mandela, was a frequent visitor.

In the months leading up to the removals, the ANC and the Indian Congress organised joint
protests in Sophiatown against the government’s clearance plans. Mandela, then the ANC’s
deputy president, gave a speech in Sophiatown’s Freedom Square, telling the crowd that the
time for passive resistance was over, and the ANC’s local youth league launched the slogan
“Removal over our dead bodies.”
But when they realised how heavily armed the police were likely to be, ANC leaders –
including Mandela – advised residents not to resist.
“There would have been a massacre if they had, there’s no doubt about it,” says Joseph.

In August 1956, in the middle of the South African winter, Victor Mokine and his family were
finally moved.

“We waited for the removal truck the whole day. By the time it arrived, it was 7pm, dark and
cold,” he says.

When they reached Meadowlands, they were given a dustbin, two loaves of bread and a
pint of milk. An official took them to their new house.

“When we got there, they just dumped us outside with our goods. There were no ceilings in
the house and the floors and walls had not been plastered. The roofing had just been laid
over the bricks so the first night we arrived it was very cold, the wind was howling through
the vents. We had to use bits of newspaper that night to keep it out,” he says.
“There were still no shops in Meadowlands and we had to go to adjoining townships,
Orlando West, to buy goods for the first year.”

And although the family of 10 was now living in a five-bedroom house, much larger than the
one-bedroom place they’d had in Sophiatown, the move was traumatic.

“Coming home from work in the evening, people kept getting lost because there were still no
streetlights in Meadowlands and the houses were identical matchbox structures. And many
families lost the men who were the heads of the households.”
“They just started passing away. In the street where we lived, within three or four years I
found out that most of the households had lost their main bread-winner. My own father
passed away in 1963, aged 53,” says Mokine.

“We attributed that to the stress they suffered.”

Victor Mokine and his family were removed from Sophiatown when he was 11
By 1962, Sophiatown had been flattened and rebuilt as a whites-only area called Triomf. The
only reminder of what had once been, was when the new residents sometimes found
cutlery and pots buried in their gardens. Contractors simply built over the rubble of the
demolished homes.